For those of you who feel that being 4,000 feet up in a basic aircraft without an engine isn’t exciting enough, then you’ll be glad to know that many gliders are “fully aerobatic” and you can learn to fly aerobatic figures at Chipping as part of your advanced training.

Occasionally looping the loop, performing barrel-rolls and hanging from your straps while flying inverted can be just the thing to blow the cobwebs away from a humdrum existence!

Flying aerobatics isn’t just about excitement and naked adrenaline however. It is a very demanding skill that requires great precision in your flying and the ability to concentrate and focus on long and complex sequences of exact control inputs while trying to ignore the noise and strong g-forces affecting you and your aircraft.

As with Cross-country flying, the world of aerobatics is an aspect of soaring that lends itself well to competitive events and regional, national and international competitions are regularly held.

The photographs on this page were taken during a national aerobatics competition at an airfield in Leicestershire, but the aircraft being flown is a K21, just like the one we have in the club fleet at Chipping. Thank you to Dave Gethin, (the pilot and one of our instructors), for allowing us to use the pictures here.